


The Master and the Dominatrix in the Lift That Time Forgot

by ModernWizard



Series: Alison Wonderland [10]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Genre: Alison Cheney deserves better, Alison and Harry are trapped in an elevator, Alison freaks out, Alison hates soggy damsels in distress, Alison rules the universe, Asexual Master, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Queer Character, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Critical hit in the feels, Female Character of Color, Fix-It, Gen, HD Angst in Surround Sound, Harry fucks up weddings for a living now, Harry loves Alison, It's hot in there okay?!, Kinky Master, Multi, No Lesbians Die, On-the-fly fashion design, Other, Past Mind Control, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Robot Feels, Robots, Shalka Dorks, Shalkaverse, That's not a surprise, The Angst Master is at it again!, The Dork fam, There should probably be a note for claustrophobia and/or panic attacks on this one, This somehow involves fucking up a lot of weddings, Traumatic Brain Injury, Well actually he's the Master of Getting Shit Done, What's a surprise is what she feels for him, clothing removal, rip your feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22533454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernWizard/pseuds/ModernWizard
Summary: Alison Cheney loves the Master indigenous to her universe. In fact, he's one of her partners, the other being Bill Potts, who she rescued from the universe next door. Unfortunately, she dislikes the Master from Bill's universe, who Bill loves. Harry, as Alison calls him, has been doing good [albeit in a sort of chaotic, spite-based way] for the past year or so, but she still wants nothing to do with him.Alison and the Magister [what she calls her partner] have a fight. She asks him to say that he loves her. He refuses, saying that he loves no one.The other humans and Time Dorks provide no support, so Alison consults Harry in desperation. He, who loves her and would gladly be her friend, listens, gives some advice, and generally behaves himself. Alison concludes that he might not be an utterly irredeemable asshole.But then Alison and Harry end up stuck in an elevator together. "Awkward" doesn't even begin to describe it. Alison panics and breaks down in sobs in front of Harry. Well, shit. What's her sort of enemy gonna do, now that she's become a soggy helpless damsel in distress?
Relationships: Alison Cheney & The Master (Doctor Who), Alison Cheney & The Master (Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka), Alison Cheney & The Master (Simm)
Series: Alison Wonderland [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/710001
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	1. Semantics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two nitpicky, pedantic control freaks have a fight and piss each other off.

“One word!” Alison raises her left index finger in the air. “Four letters! One little syllable! And yet it stops you dead in your tracks.” She stalks the Magister, rounding toward him on the perimeter of his study.

Despite Alison’s accusation, the Magister doesn’t stop. He, who has been pacing in agitation during this entire conversation, continues. They’re like two hands of a clock, chasing each other inexorably around the dial. She, the longer, a hundred and eighty-three centimeters, is the swiftly striding minute hand, with a warm reddish tone in her middle brown skin. He, the shorter, one hundred and seventy-two centimeters, is the hour hand of measured pace, with an amber glow in his sepia complexion.

“Your presumptions are inaccurate. That word does not daunt me.” The Magister pronounces each word carefully in his sonorous, penetrating voice. The downward tilt of his physiognomy — the long and low brows, the magnificent triangle of a nose, the deep-set mouth, the pointy goatee — adds to his mien of gravitas. Black-suited in a Mandarin-collared jacket with brilliantly white cuffs at his wrists, he blends well with the shadowy room. Usually Alison thinks he’s incredibly beautiful, but right now he’s coming off haughty and sententious.

“I merely refuse to subscribe to its denotations and connotations because I know myself,” the Magister continues. “I know that I do not have either the capacity for that word or the inclination to develop that capacity. There is no fear in such an action. I am merely exercising my insight.”

“Are you too eeeeevil to do something so good — is that it?” Alison mocks him. She nearly trips over the couch, but saves herself by leaning against it casually, like she meant to do that.

The Magister’s study does not provide an appropriate set for their confrontation. It’s a rectangular room with a low ceiling that’s embossed in rectangular segments, kind of like a chocolate bar. A deep, plush night-sky carpet covers the floor. Shelves full of his uncannily caricatured likeness dolls and his wizardly paraphernalia — scrolls, wands, skulls — line the wall, interspersed with low, warm lumps of dark purple furniture. The dim light, provided by luminous spheres floating on the ceiling and track lighting on the shelves, sheds an ambient glow, but little more. In other words, it’s the perfect room for chatting, reading, drowsing, and snuggling. It is not, however, an opportune location for a dramatically blocked dispute, mostly because it’s too easy to run into the furniture.

He shakes his head. “No. My capacity for evil has nothing to do with my capacity for...that.”

“Liar! You can’t even say the damn word.” Her voice takes on a venomous simper: “What would happen if you said it? Is it the antidote to your favorite spell or something? If you say,  _ I am the Master, and you will obey me, _ and then I say  _ that word,  _ do you just completely fall apart?” 

“Did I do so when you told me thus earlier? No.” He, being a well-practiced ex-supervillain, drifts toward her with a clean, inexorable glide. He’s too cool to collide with his furniture.

Suddenly, more than anything, she wants to make him lose his shit. “Would the spell be broken?” she guesses. “Would you shriek and start melting like the Wicked Witch of the West — or tear yourself in two like Rumplestiltskin? What would you say, huh?” She spins quickly, hoping to ambush him with her fierceness, but she just jostles a floor-to-ceiling bookcase with her elbow. Skulls and crystals on it rattle and shift. Why is it so fucking cluttered in here? 

There are some substantial differences between Alison and the Magister. She’s an Earthling; he’s a Time  Lord Dork from Gallifrey. She’s thirty; he’s so old that he has forgotten his age, though he looks about double hers. She’s entirely biological; he’s entirely mechanical: a robot. 

Nevertheless, they’re incredibly similar; though Alison initially started off as the Doctor’s traveling companion, she soon grew closer to the Doctor’s inevitable spouse: the Magister. Alison and the Magister are partners too now, albeit of the nonsexual and kinky variety, and they love each other greatly.

Well, Alison loves her robot greatly. As she’s discovering from this conversation, however, he may not reciprocate her feelings. She screwed up enough courage today to say  _ I love you, _ to which he said an underwhelming nothing. Hence this fight.

Sometimes the Magister, being rather a dolt, is incredibly literal about things. Because Alison has asked him what he would say, he answers precisely that question. “I would say, just as I said before,  _ I know that you love me. To love me makes you safe and whole and happy, which is all that I wish you to be. Thus I am most pleased. But I know too that you wish me to say the same to you. That, however, is something that I cannot do. My bond with you is woven of many threads, but love is not among them.”  _ Furthermore, because she said  _ that word _ to him earlier, his answer is an exact recitation of his earlier response. Sometimes, for all his perspicacity, Alison’s robot is surprisingly dense. He’s addressing the question that she’s asking, but he seems to be missing the rage and hurt behind it.

Alison redoubles her efforts to piss off the Magister. Maybe then he’ll know how she feels. Why is he so scared of saying  _ I love you? _ she wants to know. Is he worried that his reputation as an intergalactic supervillain might not survive? He corrects her, saying that he’s a  _ universal _ supervillain, not merely an intergalactic one.

She challenges him to stop it with the simplistic bullshit. Sure, he watched a lot of  _ Defenders of Earth _ in the 1970s. Sure, he took his fashion cues from  _ Defenders’  _ villainous Professor Panjandrum. But that doesn’t mean that he has to limit himself to an Earthling idea of an alien supervillain. He claims that he always has been and always will be much more than that fictional antagonist.

Alison, momentarily out of cogent retorts, sneers at him: “Oh yeah?”

“Domina!” The Magister’s left eyebrow pops loose in distress. Hah!  _ Now _ he’s annoyed.  _ Domina _ is his title/name for her, as  _ Magister _ is hers for him; both of them mean approximately the same thing for them:  _ ruler, leader, issuer of commands, dom[me].  _ There was no way she was going to call him his self-given name,  _ the Master, _ so they chose alternatives for each other instead. “Is that what you would call me now — the name of some ineffectual fool?”

She flicks her hand at him. “Oh be quiet. I’m not calling you Professor Panjandrum, and you know it. I just mean that you don’t have to confine yourself to what you think a supervillain should be like. You’re so much more than that! That’s why I love you!” 

The eyes narrow. The voice and the eyebrows go down. “Do not, I pray you —  _ do not —  _ treat me as some misgoverned child. Do not tell me what to do, especially not now, when I am most displeased with you.”

“I’m not controlling your emotions. I’m just saying that it’s okay to love someone. I know it’s scary because you’re not used to it, but I’m not going to laugh at you if you say it. Hell — I  _ want  _ you to say it. That’s what this whole fight is about! You can acknowledge that you protect people, that you care for them, that you have friends, that you want to do good.” 

_“Tace!”_ The Magister brings out the magic word, their safeword, the word that should end all discussion. “Please — go no further. We both know that I already acknowledge these things. You impugn me with your insinuation that I do not.” 

“So then admit it!” Alison tosses her hands in the air. The glowing spheres on the ceiling ripple around from the force of her movement. “Say the fucking word! Try being a morally complex agent.” 

“Please!  _ Tace.  _ If you wish me to remain, then obey me.” His eyes, bronze-flecked, are as serious and as hard as metal.

She, who knows that her performance of ire would be pointless if he left, obeys him.

The Magister sighs. Finally he quits pacing. He lowers his head, and shadows fill up his deep eye sockets. “Domina, Domina, Domina...please listen to me.” When he raises his head, he’s almost begging. “I adore you. You mean as much to me as my inevitable spouse. I want to keep you safe and whole and happy for as long as you wish to be so kept. It is my great honor to be your Magister, your robot, the one who takes your wishes as commands. 

“In knowing you,” he continues, “I finally find the peace, the certainty, and the truth that I have so long wanted in my mind. Your light warms me, sears me, and burns away all doubt. I have never pursued pain, but this feeling of being afire is one that I welcome with all of my being. It is a pain that I deeply desire,” he says, as if the statement is a prayer. He smiles; his eyes radiate sparks of sincere golden joy. “Knowing you, I am still. I am clear. And yes — I am good. Nevertheless — “

“—Nevertheless you don’t love me,” she finishes in a stomped-on voice.

“I love no one,” he says. He even denies that he loves the Doctor, his inevitable spouse, and Bill, Alison’s inevitable fiancee.

“You...You...love... _ me. _ Don’t you?” 

“I have never claimed so; you have only assumed it.”

“Oh. Well… You acted like you did. I thought you did. I guess...I was...wrong.” Alison won’t cry. Not here, not now, not in front of her robot.

“I adore you,” the Magister says, his voice as strong and deep as one of his hugs, “but I do not love you. I cannot pretend what I do not feel. I am greatly sorry that I must grieve you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Oh, my dear, lovely, sad Domina, please let me hold you. Please let me explain myself.” He moves toward her, softly now, his arms outstretched.

“No.” She, wrapping her arms around her middle, wishes that she could manifest spikes to ward him off. She turns her back on him.

“Please let me explain. You suppose it to be a useless differentiation between synonyms, but adoration is very different from love. If you would only listen to me — ”

“No. No! You don’t need to explain. It’s obvious what’s going on. I tell you that something’s important to me; I ask you to say  _ I love you, _ and you don’t. It has nothing to do with honesty and accuracy. It’s because you just don’t fucking care. You don’t care about what’s important to me because you’re too in love with yourself.” Balling up her fists, she goes rigid, spinning around to yell into his face, “You...you...nitpicky, hairsplitting, finicky, stuck-up control freak!”

His majestic nose flares as he inhales quickly. “You try my patience; truly you do. I will not submit to your abuse, and so I will withdraw. Let us speak when our tempers are calmer.”

“Fine! I’m going out.” She swans toward the door, her dignified exit interrupted when she barks her shins on an ottoman.

“The waterfront? Please do take your phone.”

She slams the study door on him.


	2. Harry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison, realizing that she's late for one of Harry's parole hearings, texts him. He's in the midst of spoiling [yet another] wedding, and he gives Alison an audience to his work. Much to her annoyance, he correctly figures out that she wants to talk to him, so they agree to meet at the local diner.

Marching along the Burlington waterfront, Alison sends a mass text to the members of her immediate and extended Dork fam.  _ My robot’s being an utterly stubborn DOOFUS about love again. Please help. Send moral support. _

She pockets her phone and stares at the water for a while. Then a flurry of chimes from her pocket signal replies from her fellow Dorks. Alison pulls out her phone to check her texts. 

No one is any help. The Stylist, a Black Time Dork woman and the Magister’s best [only?] friend from their school days, replies first. The Magister, she says, _has always_ _flipped his shit if he can’t pin things down, especially feelings, deader than a butterfly on a board._ She advises that Alison cut her losses and realize she’s not going to win this one. “What?!” Alison cries, promptly ignoring the Stylist’s advice.

Responses from Galleia and Lakis arrive next. They’re sisters and the Stylist’s adopted [human] daughters, from 1500 BCE Atlantis. Lakis, who is obsessed with kitties, remarks that the Magister can say that he loves someone in Cat, so why can’t he do it in human language? Galleia, indignant on Alison’s behalf, thinks that the Magister is  _ a fucking stupid dingus  _ if he can’t recognize how important it is for Alison to hear  _ I love you. _ Alison agrees with both of their points, but their sympathy doesn’t really solve her problem.

Words from Bill, Alison’s inevitable fiancee and the best person in any universe as far as Alison is concerned, come up next on Alison’s screen. She commiserates with Alison’s frustration, every sentence followed with her characteristic flock of exclamation points. She thinks that people are social beings, meant to form constellations, and the Magister needs to get over himself and tell Alison that he loves her. Much to Alison’s chagrin, she immediately signs off and tells the Magister exactly what she told Alison.

Finally comes some wisdom from the Doctor. As they so often do on the topic of emotions, they quote someone else’s words. This time it’s the end of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s sonnet  _ Silent Noon, _ where two people enjoy a  _ close-companioned, inarticulate hour.  _ So what’s the Doctor saying? Alison should assume that the Magister loves her because the two of them can hang out in comfortable silence? Maybe that works for the Doctor, who knows exactly what the Magister feels for them, according to their psychic connection with him. Alison can’t accept that, however.

“Fuck,” Alison remarks, wilting on the bench. Not only is she fighting with her partner, but she’s also receiving absolutely no support from the other Dorks. How much worse can this day get?

Much, much worse, apparently. Alison checks the time on her TARDIS Talk phone. It’s 12:17 PM. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck  _ fuck!” _ She’s late for Harry’s parole hearing. 

Alison met Harry in Dystopiaville. He’s the Master from Bill’s universe, just as the Magister is the Master from Alison’s universe. Bill and Harry cared for each other — he saved her life, and they helped each other get over their universe’s shitty Doctor — but Alison cared nothing for him. First of all, he tried to read her mind without permission, which recapitulated previous mental violations Alison had suffered from aliens. She would never forgive him for that. Second of all, he was short-tempered, immature, and cruel. She collaborated with him under duress for the Dystopiaville revolution, then left him there when she and her Dorks took Bill home.

But Harry wouldn’t stay away. About a year ago, the Magister implanted a chip in Alison’s brain. He hoped that it would mitigate the damage to her circadian rhythms caused by one of those aforementioned alien violations. Unfortunately, the chip malfunctioned, sending Alison into an intractable depression.

Bill, still secretly communicating with Harry, informed him of Alison’s condition, asking him to come. Since Alison’s chip was based on Cyber tech that Harry had repurposed, Harry offered his expertise. He crashed back into Alison’s life, eager to heal her, impress her, and ultimately win her affection.

Harry healed Alison, which did indeed impress her. He had also become more thoughtful, more even-tempered, and even [slightly] more compassionate. Filled with regret for his past actions, he wanted to be her friend. Alison just wanted him to fuck off.

He didn’t. Alison recognized that, though odious to her, Harry was dear to Bill. They were chosen family. Harry calls Bill  _ my dearest daughter, _ while Bill refers to him as her  _ sort of foster dad maybe. _ Alison couldn’t deprive Bill of someone so important to her, and so Harry stayed.

Alison imposed conditions on Harry’s presence in her universe. First, she wanted no relationship with him beyond that of respectful, courteous necessity. Second, if he wanted to live here, then he had to benefit and improve the world. Thus he agreed to a year of monthly lunchtime parole hearings, during which he tried to convince her that she should let him stay.

Anyway, Alison is now late for one of those hearings. She texts Harry:  _ Afternoon! _

_ Why, dearest Dominatrix mine, to what do I owe the pleasure? _ He started calling her that in Dystopiaville to insult her, the Magister’s Domina. Alison, who has never wanted to allow him the intimacy of her first name, said that he could only call her  _ Dominatrix. _ He, having a sense of humor, agreed. 

_ It’s 12:15 PM on the second Sunday. Where are you? _

_ Working — right near you, in fact — South Burlington. Kitty has its day off, but there’s no rest for the wicked.  _ Disabled with fluctuating levels of chronic pain, Harry usually gets around in Kitty, his sentient wheelchair equivalent, instead of walking. One day a week, however, he lets the restless, gregarious scorpion robot off to visit its many friends and play with keys and other shiny things. During that time, Harry uses a regular power wheelchair and enjoys the silence.

Alison writes back:  _ Disbanding white nationalists? That’s my favorite. _

_ Nah. MY favorite: crashing an ill-starred wedding. _ A selfie accompanies this reply. Harry’s painted and pouting face [he’s doing duck lips] appears under a small-brimmed golden yellow hat adorned with dusty pink roses. He’s holding out two fingers, but horizontally, and wearing truly odd gloves. They’re mostly olive green, but yellow between the fingers, the same color as his hat, with dusty pink frills around the wrists. He looks like the mother of the bride, whose idea of fancy dress is at least three decades out of date.

Alison laughs out loud. Harry really has created a niche for himself on her Earth. With his penchant for telling people what to do and exploiting their vulnerable moments, he initially investigated wedding planning. His advice to his first couple exposed gambling addiction, astronomical credit card debt, and the fact that neither really liked each other. The engagement was acrimoniously dissolved. Deciding to go with his talent for disruption and destruction, Harry now works as a sort of social mercenary under the title  _ The Master of Getting Shit Done. _

_ Oh damn, _ Alison types back.  _ Who’s the unlucky duo this time? _

_ I’ll call you. Pick up, and I’ll put it on speaker, and then you can hear. _

Alison’s phone rings. The officiant’s voice sounds tinny and far away: “If anyone here knows of just reason why Lee and Cooper should not be joined in matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.”

“That’s my cue,” Harry whispers to Alison. He announces to everyone in the room: “They’re both fucking each other’s siblings and lying about it!”

A tiny outraged scream rings out at the other end of the phone: “Is that true?”

“Cheater!” screeches another voice.

“Asshole!” Scuffling noises follow, along with the sounds of objects tumbling and breaking.

Even as she winces, Alison chews on her lower lip not to laugh. Lee and Cooper brought this on themselves. Heck, Cooper even hired Harry for this. Nevertheless, this spectacle of public ignominy is all Harry’s doing. His cunning genius choreographs this couple’s problem into a show-stopping scene right out of a romantic comedy. 

She really shouldn’t encourage him. Even though he breaks up neo-Nazi groups, exposes human trafficking rings, redirects Tory billionaires’ wealth to pro-choice organizations, hacks government computers to improve people’s welfare subsidies, and otherwise does an astounding amount of good, he executes it with the spiteful flair of the supervillain he once was. The beneficial ends really shouldn’t justify the needlessly vicious means, right? At the same time,  _ fuck  _ all of those cruel, heartless people who profit off the dehumanization of others. And  _ especially _ fuck the Nazis.

Hanging up, Harry returns to text:  _ I love my job! I liberate people from dire straits, make money, and gain loyal contacts who will do anything I ask when I need to get shit done in future.  _

Alison replies,  _ Uh huh. Speaking of which — it’s parole hearing time. _

_ No, it’s not. We ended those three months ago. You have judged me no threat to the moral fabric of your universe. _

Alison snorts.  _ Despite your distinctly sadistic methods of Getting Shit Done. _

He ignores that remark.  _ Come to think of it, this is the second time you thought that I was late for my hearing. _

The significance of his comment sinks into Alison’s brain. Parole hearings are done, over, finished, no more. Yet Alison still keeps calling him up for them, not just once, but twice. She did it last month too.  _ Shit! You’re right. I’m so sorry. Never mind; never mind; never mind. _

_You need to talk to me, don’t you?_ _The hearings are just an excuse._

What was she thinking, calling him, of all people? He’s the closest thing that she has to an enemy. Okay, he’s really more of a former enemy and current, uh, source of entertaining anecdotes, but why should she seek out his company? He has no relevance to her life.

_ Never mind, _ Alison says again.

_ Do you want to meet? _

Alison shakes her head, though Harry can’t see.  _ It’s family stuff. _

_ The Master. _

Alison sends him a bunch of question marks: _????????_ _How do you know?_

_ You never ring me up without a purpose. If something so perturbs you that it impels you to talk to ME, of all people, then it’s probably the Master. And who better to speak to about the Master than the Master himself? _

He has a point. The other Dorks have been no help whatsoever. _ I don’t want to keep you from work. _

_ Yes, you do,  _ says Harry.  _ If you truly didn’t want to talk to me, you would have rung off right after apologizing. You haven’t. In fact, you’ve kept the conversation going, which implies that you DO want to talk to me. _

_ Besides, _ he goes on,  _ you haven’t explicitly said that you DON’T want to talk to me. More specifically, you haven’t denied a single one of my assumptions. In conclusion, you want to see me — quite urgently, in fact. You’re just too embarrassed to admit it. _

Alison glares at her phone.  _ Don’t fucking gloat about it.  _

_ I’m not fucking gloating about it, _ Harry says.  _ I assure you — I’m reserving all my gloats for the inevitable melee now occurring all around me.  _

_ Yikes!  _ Alison types back. 

_Fun fact: Do you know that you can do serious damage to someone — or at least their carefully lacquered hairdo — with an expertly wielded boutonniere? Not me, of course. I am innocent here, but a mere observer to this fracas. Cooper’s best man clearly has it in for Lee’s dad, though._ _Anyway, like I said, I’m just in South Burlington. Where are you?_

_ The waterfront, _ Alison says. They agree to meet at Fork Off, the diner across the street from Alison’s house, in half an hour.


	3. Banter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison receives a report from Harry about his activities at the wedding. They talk shit about his clothes, which are, objectively speaking, hideous. He, being a gifted psychic [and a great reader of people], knows what's up with her.

Alison enters Fork Off, a narrow, metal-walled tube of a restaurant. The kitchen equipment lines the back wall, spotlessly silver. A long counter, deep, gleaming red, with a saturated purple base, offers eleven pink, chrome-trimmed stools for patrons. Booths, red-tabled and pink-seated like the counter, line the door side of the diner, where Alison has just entered. The black and white checks on the floor, the winking tube lights on the massive wood-cased jukebox, and the vibrant reds and purples all reflect in the curved steel walls. As much as Alison likes Fork Off’s bright, even clashing, design, she blinks for a few seconds, adjusting to the visual assault.

“Oi, Dominatrix!” Snapping his fingers, Harry hails her from the booth on the end farthest from the jukebox. “Over here.” His power wheelchair is parked perpendicular to the booth, but he’s not using it at the moment. In fact, he stands, leaning on the back of the booth for support. He must be having a really good day, pain-wise, then.

“Don’t yell  _ that,” _ Alison chides him, hurrying over.

“What am I supposed to say then?” Harry replies, sliding into the seat across from her.  _ “Oh yoo hoo, Ms. Alison Clarabella Cheney — might I draw your attention to my location? _ You’d have my head.”

Fork Off’s cheap fare, filled with all the nostalgia and grease of mid-century diner menus, usually attracts crowds around the clock. But there are only five other people in the diner besides her and Harry. A few single people sit in the booths and a few at the counter. A cook, wearing a paper cap shaped like a boat folded from newspaper, presides over a sizzling grill. The delicious smell of things frying in liquid animal fat permeates the entire restaurant. No one seems to have heard Harry yelling or cared.

Alison turns her attention to Harry, whose outfit is fucking atrocious: a long-sleeved bolero over a strapless, below-the-knee dress. The sprawling pink peony print, the huge shoulder puffs, and the conservative hemline again make Alison think of an outdated mother of the bride. “You look like a couch from 1985.” She snickers.

This is what they do. With all the heavily charged history between them, Alison and Harry end up slinging shit about each other’s outfits. Okay, well, about certain outfits. Like everyone in the Dork fam except for Alison, Harry takes fashion very seriously. If he’s wearing his usual style — a combination of blood, ice, and fire, framed with razor sharpness — Alison would never laugh at him [mostly because she’s too distracted by his hotness]. If he’s dressed up for a work function, though, he’s fair game.

Harry flashes her a smile. If she saw him undecorated, she wouldn’t look twice at him. She’d clock only an untanned White guy. Shorter than average, tending toward emaciation, he has a sagging round face and narrow cheeks. And, being generally uninterested in White guys, she’d move on.

But then, as soon as Harry moves, he becomes unforgettable. That smile, bracketed by his greying goatee, creases up his entire face. His low, straight eyebrows rise, and his eyes seem to darken from hazel to brown. A certain pointiness appears in the angles of his face, suggesting elaborate plots. The glitter on his eyelids and the bright red lipstick shine, enhancing his larger-than-life personality. You don’t see some weird guy in drag. Instead you behold some weird  _ person, _ gender be damned, who knows exactly how weird he is, exactly how much of a genius he is, exactly how attractive he is, and exactly how much you want to join his latest plot.

“You saw that disgrace of a hat, right?” Harry hauls it out from the back of his chair and cocks it over one ear. “There is an ensemble for which this,” he says, stuffing it out of sight, “is the crowning touch, but this is not that ensemble.”

Alison looks under the table. “Wow, matching pumps and everything. One of  _ those _ weddings, huh?” she says, coming back up. “Was there coordinated nail varnish involved?”

“Yup. Mayfair’s Classique line, #37,  _ Rosy-Fingered Dawn _ or some shit.”

“I might not know anything about fashion, but I’m reasonably certain you’re not wearing any nail varnish.” 

Harry, who can, of course, snark as well as Alison, lowers his eyelids halfway, sends one eyebrow up, and responds with a slightly different emphasis of withering disgust on every single word: “And clearly you’ve never seen a French manicure, my dear.” 

“Hah!” Alison points at him victoriously. “You’re slipping, Harry. It’s not like you to forget the details.”

Snapping back into his usual voice, Harry says, “Mayfair Classique stinks. The smell makes me sick. Literally.”

Alison shudders in sympathy. “So why the costume?”

“Two other people in the wedding party were wearing this travesty,” he explains. “I was just fitting in.” Harry trolls wedding attendees by duplicating the most self-important guest’s outfit. He enjoys any reaction, including odd looks and thumbs up, but he prefers debacles in which people reveal their true foolishness.

“Okay, what happened  _ this  _ time when those people found out that someone had copied their look down to the make-up?”

“Hats were stolen. Shins were kicked. Nephews were disinherited.” Harry gazes off into middle distance, overcome with misty-eyed joy. “It was beautiful.”

Alison fakes a sigh. “And how did  _ any _ of that promote the greater good?”

“Well, the disinherited nephew was finally motivated to move out of his evangelical Christian parents’ house and into a shelter. That’s not the greatest, but my contacts are working on an alternative place for him to say. It also led to a tip on some property managers illegally screening out disabled applicants. Fuckers!” The pointiness in Harry’s face assumes a hostile edge. He, having been disabled during a messed-up resurrection, particularly hates bias against people like him.

“Yes! Nail their asses.” Alison clenches her fist. She herself has her own disability from brain damage caused by an alien mental invasion. Meanwhile, her inevitable fiancee Bill deals with the pain of an uneasy melding between her biological flesh and her robotic Cyber core. Anyway, Alison champions equality, accessibility, and universal design as much as Harry does.

“They’re also raging transphobes,” Harry goes on, “so clearly it’s time for a sting.” Bouncing eyebrows. “I just need someone to play my spouse. Hmmm…”

The server appears. Alison orders pancakes with a side of fried potatoes. Harry orders three triple cheese omelets, four sides of bacon, four of hash browns, two hard-boiled eggs, and coffee. As a side effect of his disability, he’s constantly running out of energy, a loss that he counteracts by voluminous consumption. That’s actually a small meal for him, really more of a snack.

“So — “ Harry’s voice drops in volume once the server leaves. He folds his hands on the edge of the table, looks down at them, then meets her eyes again. “So what’s up with you and the Master?”

Alison stalls — and stalls. After twenty seconds of intent staring, Harry abandons eye contact. Alison stalls so long that the server stops by with Alison’s single plate and Harry’s several. The odor of butter-enhanced eggs and crispy, slightly burned potatoes hits Alison’s nostrils. Suddenly hungry, she digs in. So does Harry.

Several minutes later, he says, “Well, my dear?” 

Alison raises her head abruptly, realizing that they’re in the middle of a conversation. He’s done waiting politely. He’d like an answer. She forks a cube of fried potato back and forth across her plate. “Relationship stuff,” she finally mumbles. Why did she think it was a good idea to confide in him?

“Well, yes, obviously.” Harry lifts his chin impatiently. “You and he are having some conflict, but what about?”

“I — It’s —” Alison’s words congeal in her throat. She remembers Harry accosting her in Dystopiaville and informing her that love was  _ the cruelest of masters _ or something. Now she really doesn’t want to tell him. “It’s hard to say.”

“Hm.” The last bite of Harry’s first omelet disappears down his gullet. He puts away food with an efficiently indiscriminate compulsion. When he’s ready, he’ll lick his plates, eat his eggshells, drink her unused maple syrup, and chomp down all the charred potato bits that she has already set aside for him. “Should I guess then?” Even without relying on their prodigious psychic powers, the Magister and Harry possess the astonishing ability to intuit thoughts and feelings. 

Alison sighs. “Yeah, go ahead. Just don’t — don’t laugh at me, okay?”

“Of course not! Now then — “ He smiles, warming to the challenge. The color in his eyes condenses down into something dark and deep, as it always does when he’s most excited or engaged. Hunching forward with creases of concentration on his brow, he scans Alison, like he’s detecting clues that she doesn’t even know about. 

“Ah,” he says after a moment, sitting back, with the satisfaction of someone who’s figured it all out. “You must have consulted the other Dorks already. They didn’t help you, so you came to me.”

“That’s — That’s actually right,” Alison concedes. You can’t help but feel a small stirring of awe when he does this, even if you know he’ll eventually discover your embarrassing secret.

“Your disagreement with the Master, then, goes to the hearts of your relationship,” Harry continues, wielding his knife like a tableware exclamation point. “I’m assuming that because you’ve talked to the people who know him best. The hearts of your relationship are, of course, what you feel for each other, so this conflict concerns the nature of your emotional attachment.”

“Well, in one sense,” Alison allows, “but it’s really more about — “

“Wait!” Harry holds up a palm. “I’m not done. Since the two of you are nauseatingly devoted to each other and disgustingly at peace,” he says, looking like he’s going to retch, “with the depth, passion, and limits of your weird kinky connection, you aren’t fighting about that bond  _ per se. _ In that case, this is probably a semantic dispute; you disagree on what to call it. 

“Both of you, being insufferably exact and word-obsessed  _ dweebs,  _ have each given a very specific label to your relationship, but the words are different. I assume that you,” he says, dipping his chin at Alison, “are unreasonably angry because you cannot acknowledge his carefully considered perspective.”

“Hey!” Alison points her fork at him. “I said you could  _ guess.  _ I didn’t say you could insult me and side with him.”

“Love,” says Harry suddenly, his voice soft, his gaze direct.

All of a sudden, he reminds Alison of the Magister at his best: straightforward and certain, mastering his nasty impulses. He’s steady and true, with an insightful mind. She can trust him with anything, even what she’s most ashamed of, because he’ll take it seriously — because he loves her.

She shakes her head. Yeah, he  _ loves _ her. Excepting those first three months in Dystopiaville, Harry has always loved her. Sarcastic in wording, but sincere in action, his affection combines a reverential deference, an aggressive protectiveness, and a delight in delivering the truth to her in thoroughly annoying ways. 

And, of course, Harry wants Alison to reciprocate; they discussed his expectations over a year ago when he came to fix her chip. She informed him that he wasn’t going to receive her love because he’d fucking tried to invade her mind when they first met. He accepted her judgment as perfectly fair. She thought that they had agreed not to bring this bullshit up ever again. 

So where’s this term of endearment coming from? She hasn’t authorized that. “Hey!” Alison repeats, though without her fork this time. “Maybe you can call Bill that, but not me.”

Harry shakes his head. “That wasn’t a nickname, dearest Dominatrix mine. That was the subject of your dispute with the Master: love. Given that it’s such a messy, multivalent, and yet inexplicably popular term in English, I suppose that you used it to describe what you feel for him. He, on the other hand, did not use that term. In fact, he probably argued strenuously against it, leaving you feeling ignored, hurt, and angry.”

“Yeah.” Alison slumps. “I call it love; he calls it adoration and says he’s never loved anyone, not even — not even — not even me.” There it is. There’s no going back now. Now he knows the shameful truth. He’ll probably dub her the panjandrum of pedantry at any moment, dismissing her heartbreak as a trivial bother. “Just — don’t laugh at me.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Shoving his empty plates to the side, Harry leans across the table, focusing on her.

“Well, back in Dystopiaville,” says Alison, twisting and untwisting her napkin, “that’s basically what you did. After I’d told you to quit being a nasty shit, you practically snarled at me.” She recites what he said, since she knows it by heart:  _ “Love is the most insidious of masters. It takes over the brain like a parasite, divorcing one’s perceptions from reality. It makes decent people believe that they are horrible and vice versa. And yet still you humans willingly submit to it because the temptation of satisfaction is too great.” _

“I said that?” Harry’s tone lightens in puzzlement. “I’m sure I did. It’s just that I don’t remember.”

“Yeah, well, it hasn’t been seventy years for all of us,” Alison mutters. With the attendant time distortions caused by the black hole near Dystopiaville, seven decades passed for Harry before he reunited with the Dork fam a little over a year ago. Harry had plenty of time to develop a modicum of consideration for others. Only seven months had passed for Alison, the Magister, Bill, and the Doctor, however. Alison, by contrast, didn’t have enough time in which to forget his mocking words. “It was in the context of warning me not to break Bill’s heart,” she adds, “but you still sounded horribly revolted by the concept of caring about someone else.”

“Hypocrisy, as usual, and denial,” Harry fires back. “As much as I wanted you two to fall in love and leave that dump, I hated the fact that you were replacing me in her affection. And so,” he says with a huge eye roll, “I could think of no better and more effective way to deal with that ambivalence than by belittling and antagonizing you.” Lowering his voice to a whisper, he says with solemn sarcasm, “That’s because I’m a genius.” He gives a significant little nod, like she knows exactly what she means. “Look, Dominatrix — I’m sor — “

Alison shakes her head. “Don’t apologize. Didn’t we do enough of that when you came back to fix my chip? I seem to recall you apologizing for everything up to and including tidal fluctuations and sunspots.”

“I also have some deep regrets about the orbital pattern of Neptune.”

“Although — “ Alison pretends to consider. “You could always beg my forgiveness for inflicting that poofy-sleeved floral monstrosity on my poor eyeballs.”


	4. Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry actually gives Alison some sensible advice about her love problem!

Harry’s eyes sparkle mischievously. “And you could always apologize for boring me with yet another of your infinitely dull jumper-and-jeans combos. Not to mention whatever flaccid excuse for an updo is — “ He breaks off. 

“Huh?” Alison knits her eyebrows at him. She finally permitted Galleia and Lakis to experiment with her hair. Galleia coiled the hair from the front and sides of Alison’s head into a bun at her crown, securing it with a golden jointed snake the width of a hair ribbon. Lakis coaxed the rest of Alison’s hair to ripple across her shoulders. It feels too queenly and elaborate, like the sisters are trying to make her over into the Atlantean royalty that they themselves are by rights. Alison prefers things much simpler.

“No, actually, scratch that,” says Harry. “I really like what you’ve done with your hair. Turn around.” He spins his finger. “Let me see the back.”

Alison does so. “I didn’t do it. Blame Galleia and Lakis.”

“Why should I blame them? It’s quite flattering.” He grins at her, a smile all the brighter for his very red lips. “Your usual spherical puff is like an angelic halo or a solar corona. It’s a sign of cosmic power, fit for the ruler of the universe.” That’s another of his not-really-joking epithets for her, one that the other Dorks have cheerfully perpetuated. “But this,” he says, gesturing at her current ‘do, “is a style with much more specific, historical allusions to Ancient Greece. That makes your power worldly, rather than cosmic. Now you’re the Domina or the Dominatrix — the ruler of the universe come to Earth.” 

“Um…” Alison eats the last few bites of her omelet, just to have something to do. “Thanks,” she says, her face heating up. Why does he have to compliment her like that? He sounds so much like the Magister. 

“You’re welcome. You should experiment more with your hair, with your look. I’m sure you could pull off some very striking effects.” Harry’s eyes go brown, narrowing, as he ponders. The same expression of contemplative creativity comes over her robot’s face when he’s imagining a new outfit for her.

“Anyway, stop giving me a mental makeover.” Alison pushes her empty plate away. “That’s not what I’m here for, Master of Getting Shit Done.” She calls Harry and the Magister  _ the Master of _ specific things, but never of people, and never  _ the Master _ in general. She tells him about the Magister’s recent behavior. “I’m here to see if you have any insight into why my robot is being such an intransigent little  _ shit _ over one word. Four goddamn letters!”

“You’re being an intransigent little  _ shit _ too,” Harry replies with the exact same inflection, folding his arms.

“What?!” Alison cries.

“Let me explain.” He holds up his two pointer fingers, which is both his and the Magister’s signal that a lesson is about to begin. “You and the Master have a strong attachment to each other. And you do the same things for each other. You keep each other safe and whole and happy, advise each other, guard and ground each other, and do various kinky stuff.”

“Well, yeah, but — “

“Hang on. So you two do the same things for each other because you feel the same way about each other. You call it love; he calls it adoration, but it’s the same fucking thing. Don’t you see? What you mean by love is what he means by adoration and vice versa.”

Alison ponders for a few seconds as Harry, already prepared with his credit card, presents it when the server arrives with the bill. “So  _ love  _ and  _ adoration  _ are synonyms,” she states, testing out how that assertion feels.

“Exactly! For you two, they are. I’ve figured it all out. It’s a matter of semantics, dearest Dominatrix mine,” he informs her with airy confidence. “More precisely, it’s a matter of connotation and denotation. You call it  _ love; _ he calls it  _ devotion, _ and you both have different connotations with each of those words.

“But I’m certain that you both have the exact same definition for  _ love _ and  _ adoration.  _ You need to tell him what you mean by  _ love, _ and he needs to bore you with all his pedantic semantic antics about the denotation of  _ adoration _ to him. If you compare denotations, you’ll discover that you’re both talking about the same fucking thing. Problem solved!” Harry folds his arms, self-satisfied.

Alison follows his reasoning easily. It makes sense that she and the Magister do the same things for each other because they have the same emotional attachment to each other. It’s also perfectly in character for each of them to have judiciously selected what they think is the perfect term for their attachment. It’s also, regrettably enough, perfectly in character for them to fight because they’re too invested in their own accuracy to consult one another’s mental dictionaries. “Hmm. Who knew reconciliation was just a thesaurus away?”

Harry bows as best he can, though seated at a table. “All thanks to the Master of Getting Shit Done. You’re welcome.” Harry adds a tip, autographs the receipt with a flourish, and then nods at her. He’s just settled everything.

“Thanks,” Alison says, venturing a small, true grin. “Thanks for the lunch and for the advice.” She slides out of her booth seat and stands. Harry does likewise, but only so that he can carefully transfer into his power chair. “I was worried about, uh, you, but this was — this was helpful. I’m sure you’re right, and my robot and I just need to have a simple talk. That’s — uh — whoof.” She lets down her shoulders.

“It’s a relief, I’m sure.” Harry completes her sentence. “Trust me, my dear. He feels for you exactly what you feel for him. Go. Find that out for yourself. I want to see you happy again.”

Instead of obeying Harry, Alison now sinks because she realizes how much she’s broken her contract with the Magister. Their contract requires respect and honesty from both of them, but she ignored him and insulted him. She pursued his misery with a sadistic disrespect that she’s never wielded before. She deliberately antagonized him. He can’t be ready to so quickly forgive her that, can he?

“On the other hand,” says Harry, reading the reluctance in her face, “if you’d like some more time to order your thoughts and rehearse your lines, we could go to that bakery on the waterfront. My treat.”

“Okay, yeah, I’d like that,” says Alison, and that’s the truth. 


	5. Trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison and Harry are trapped in an elevator. Alison has a meltdown.

After using the bathroom in Fork Off, Alison and Harry travel a few blocks north to Main Street Landing, which used to be the town’s train station. Now it’s either Zero or One Main Street; Alison can’t remember which. 

While the street address might be forgettable, the three flying monkeys on the building’s roof sure aren’t. The weathered copper sculptures of feathered monkeys, each the size of a small child, squat there near the clock tower, wings outstretched, as if ready to take off. Alison can’t decide if they, with their stylized, humanoid faces and wide smirks, are cool, creepy, or both.

Anyway, Alison and Harry enter at street level. They step into the lift, heading for the ground floor, location of Death by Sugar, the bakery. The doors close; Alison hits the button. The elevator descends and — 

It stops, stranding them between floors. “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Alison rolls her eyes and mashes the ground floor button a few times. “Stupid lift.” She hammers on the doors with a fist. No result.

Harry is about to investigate behind the keypad with his laser screwdriver when the power goes out. Alison curses more loudly. “Dominatrix! Hush!” says Harry. “Hmmm… We need some light.”

“Fuck!” says Alison in a marginally quieter voice. Usually she deploys a much more expressive, polysyllabic variety of words, but she usually hasn’t just had a fight with her robot. She’s also not usually trapped in a still, dark, tiny box that reminds her of where the psychic vampire lived. The psychic vampire invaded her mind, caused her traumatic brain injury, and left her rather unhappy in small, enclosed spaces. She closes her eyes; at least the darkness behind her eyelids is familiar and thus friendlier. “Fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck,” she says.

“Ugh,” remarks Harry quietly. Alison, familiar with Harry’s short-tempered Dystopiaville self, notes that he’s rather chill at the moment. “Let’s see.” Alison hears him flicking switches. Like Bill’s, Harry’s wheelchair boasts a vast array of useful attachments, among which Alison always sees something new. He activates an  _ awoogah _ horn, a turn signal, and an electrified cow catcher on the front of the footplate [she can hear the  _ zap], _ before finally finding what he wants. 

“Let there be light!” Harry cries, switching on both head- and taillights. Located at about the level of his calves, the lights are large enough to function as lanterns instead of small, pinpoint torches. They provide a diffuse, general illumination, though, being low to the ground, it leaves their faces in shadow.

Still, even that amount of light improves things. Alison now has visual confirmation that she’s not in the psychic vampire’s den, nor is she alone. “Oh thank God.” She leans against the lift wall.

“Awesome,” says Harry. “Now we can see each other’s knees.” He pokes a few more switches until a rack of lights push up from his seat back. The lift suddenly overflows with cool LED light. As Alison throws her arm over her eyes, Harry apologizes and adjusts the floodlights to less of a flood and much more of a bearable pool. “Now,” he announces, rummaging in some of the many bags, sleeves, and compartments of his chair, “I can find my phone.”

“Thank God.” Alison sighs. “Call — “

“ — The Master,” Harry finishes. “He’s closest.” He swipes open his phone and punches up a number.  _ “Call failed? _ What? Why?  _ No signal? _ I got this precisely because I was supposed to have coverage in this farm town!” His back-up phone and then his back-up back-up phone fail too. There aren’t any wireless hotspots to connect to either. “Nothing,” he reports, clicking off the back-up back-up phone.

“Nothing?” Alison echoes. “We’re stuck here? Fuck!” The darkness closes in.

“No! Wait! This lift has one of those emergency phones.” Catching sight of a plate etched  _ CALL FOR HELP, _ Harry zips over to it. He unlatches the magnetized door and ejects a disgusted breath between his teeth. “And there’s no phone in here. Ridiculous!” 

“So that’s it? We’re trapped? We’re doomed? Fuck!”

“Don’t fuck around quite yet, my dear.” Harry shakes his finger at her. “What about the magic mobiles that you and the other Dorks have? The Master told me that he invented them expressly for situations like this. Apparently they work absolutely anywhere in the universe, and — “

Alison pats her pockets, but comes up empty. “I don’t have it. Oh fuck, I don’t have it! Where did it go? I should have it!” She reviews her steps. “I took it with me when I left the house. I had it when I was texting you at the waterfront. And I had it in Fork Off. Did I?” She asks Harry, “Did you see me with it in the diner? I think I had it, but —” 

“Hush, my dear; hush.” Harry bends toward her. “I know you’re worried; I know you don’t want to be here, but it’s okay.”

Alison goes on: “But maybe I didn’t. Maybe I lost it at the waterfront after we agreed to meet — or in the diner during lunch. Where could I have lost it? How could I have been so stupid?” She drops to the floor, pulls her legs to her chest, wraps her arms around them, and rests her forehead on her knees. The stale air lies, warm and heavy, on her skin.

“Hush, my dear; hush,” Harry says again. “Please hush. Listen to me and hush. Listen to me. Hush.” His words sweep around her, low and quick, like the sound of a running brook, but he’s not begging or worrying at all. He’s casting a spell. “Hush — yes, hush — listen to me and hush. The voice in your thoughts, the one that fills you with babbling panic — you don’t want to listen to that, do you?” he asks. 

Alison finds herself shaking her head. 

“Good, yes, very good,” he says. “Of course you don’t. It will only make you fear; it will only make you cry.” 

“I hate crying,” she says, mostly to her folded arms.

“Okay then,” he says. “I know you hate crying. Then you don’t have to cry. You don’t want to heed that voice of panic in your mind, and you don’t have to, okay?”

She nods. Or maybe she agrees with him aloud. But it’s not like he can see any of that in the dark or hear any of that when she’s muffling her face. That means that he’s either making another set of his psychologically acute guesses or — 

But wait a minute. He echoed her exact words —  _ I know you hate crying. _ There’s no way he could have done that without —  _ Are you reading my mind without my permission? _ Alison asks telepathically.  _ If you are —  _

He doesn’t answer, not in words. But his blitz of alarm runs through her head, lightning across the sky of her mind. Then there’s an internal shudder — a crack of thunder, a door slamming shut — as the shame and realization hit both of them. He unlinks, blurting apologies, claiming that it was unintentional.

Suddenly then, she’s all alone. In the silent, unmoving box of the lift, the darkness waits at the edge of the light, hoping for a chance to swallow them. Inside her head, where there was someone there, reassuring her, helping her hold it together, now there’s only her. She’s unguarded.

“No! Wait!” She reaches out with her hand, though it wasn’t a physical connection they were sharing. “Come back! You have my permission. I just — I don’t — “ She thinks it so she doesn’t have to hear herself uttering the shameful truth:  _ I don’t want to be alone. _

_ Ah, _ he says.  _ Oh. Of course, my dear, of course.  _ And he’s back. He’s there. It’s kind of like a hug, but from the inside out.  _ Whatever you wish. I’m, uh, sorry for the initial telepathic connection, but you have to believe me when I say it was accidental. Okay, well, at least it was inadvertent. It’s just — I guess — Well, when my dearest daughter needs my help,  _ he says, referring to Bill,  _ I want to — you know — do whatever I can. And she and I — we have a pretty open, casual link, so I’m used to reaching out through that without asking, so — I — I’m sorry. _

“I need help,” Alison whispers. “I need so much help. And I don’t have it.” Something about that statement of stark vulnerability removes the last strength from her limbs. She slumps and sobs. “I’m helpless!” she wails. “Fuck fuck  _ fuck, _ I hate being helpless! It’s hopeless — hopeless, hopeless, hopeless…” She wipes her nose on her sleeve and starts a fresh round of sobs.

This time, Harry doesn’t even try to contradict her internal monologue or enspell her away from her despair. He just...stays. She feels his thoughts beside hers in her head, just as she senses him beside her in the lift. He stays — still where she is roiling, calm where she is upset. And he says only one thing:  _ Hey...I’m here, okay? I’m here, my dear; I’m here, and I’m not going away. I’m staying. You’re not alone. I’m here, okay? I’m here, and I’m not leaving you. Trust me. Trust me. _


	6. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry tells Alison that he's the master of his lipstick and the captain of his soul. He also says that she loves him.

Eventually, even as he’s talking to her telepathically, Harry leans back among the gel cushions of his chair. He rustles around among the storage pockets on his chair. He plops his cosmetics case in his lap, clicks it open, unfolds the shelves into step-like arrays, and redoes his make-up. 

_Were you even paying attention to me at all?_ Alison snaps, more petulantly than she means to.

Harry stops making a face for his lip liner. Setting the crayon back in its tray, he looks at her directly over his case. “My dear,” he says aloud, “are there any skills that you can do without thinking about it? Riding a bike, touch typing, knitting, something like that?”

Alison anticipates his point. “Are you saying that make-up’s the same? You can do something else while you’re doing it?”

“Yes,” he says. “And I _was_ paying attention to you.”

_Not undivided, though._

_No._ _I had to reassemble my face. You can’t really expect me to do anything useful when I’m not put together, now can you?_ He finishes the lip liner, blows her a lipstick kiss, and then resumes his cosmetic work.

Alison eyes Harry while hiding behind her hair. She squints past her remaining tears into the halo of the floodlights. He’s been sweating his way through all this recent bullshit. Perspiration has diluted the sparkle from his eyelids, the dark purple liner around his eyes. She’s so used to seeing him with make-up that he appears haggard, undone, unfinished, without it.

Now he wipes off the remainder of his overbright wedding face paint in favor of something more to his liking. This time, red and black predominate, red on his mouth, black on his eyes, with touches of white here and there, as if he’s dabbing light itself onto his face. He draws all the sharpness and brilliance back onto himself and into himself. His breath gradually slows into a contented rhythm, and he’s positively grinning by the time he puts his tools away. At last he’s his usual self again, as bright, bold, and ominous as a warning sign.

Alison lets out a breath of relief that she didn’t know that she was holding. She doesn’t feel like screaming at him any more. She, as a control freak, understands that she and others of her kind find comfort in rituals by which they pull order from chaos. The Magister defines words down to the slightest nuance. Alison recites poetry, particularly _Invictus,_ source of the immortal line, _I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul._ As for Harry, a fellow control freak if there ever was one, he finds one of his rituals in putting his face on. 

Harry replaces his make-up case into its storage compartment. “And now you understand. _I am the master of my lipstick; I am the captain of my soul.”_ He winks at her.

“Cool, cool.” Alison blows her nose a few times. “Uh, sorry ‘bout that.”

“For having snot?”

“No, for the, uh, wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth.”

“Oh shut up, my dear,” Harry says with a fond smile. “Do you see me apologizing every time I cry? No. That’s because it’s an entirely standard and value-neutral function of many species throughout the universe. It’s a fact of life, not a source of shame. So don’t apologize, okay?”

“Fuck off,” Alison says, but playfully now.

“Ah, good. You’ve pulled yourself together. Now,” says Harry, interlacing his hands before him and bending toward her, “you can pay attention to me.” He takes a breath, then focuses on her. “It’s not accurate to say that you’re helpless and hopeless.”

Alison snorts. “Oh, now don’t _you_ start in with the semantic antics too. You sound like my robot.”

“Well, we _are_ counterparts,” he points out, “so there are quite a few similarities. I mean to say that you’re _not_ hopeless. You’re _not_ helpless. You have hope; you have help. I’m here.” His eyes search hers, his face drawn as he awaits her reaction.

Alison nods. “Okay,” she says. “Yeah. True.”

“Hm! That went over easily.” Sitting back, Harry arches an eyebrow. “I expected much more objection.”

“Well, you’ve helped me before,” Alison says. “You fixed my chip. And I _have_ trusted you with my life before.” Though his repair of her chip didn’t technically require Alison to consign her life into Harry’s care, she did permit him to enter her mind library. There he met all of her other selves, witnessed the most fortified locations inside her, and zapped back to life the Cosmognosis Machine that supplied power to her entire library. She trusted him with the vulnerable depths of her misery and depression, and he electrified her back into happiness. In other words, when given her life, he does his best to make it safe and whole and happy.

“Right. Right!” Harry grins widely. “And you trust the people that you love implicitly, right? —Because you know that they’re devoted to your safety, wholeness, and happiness. I am the Master,” he intones with gravitas, “and you will trust me.” That’s a slight variation on his and the Magister’s favorite spell of psychic compulsion: _I am the Master, and you will obey me._ Even though he’s not using any psychic force on Alison at the moment, Harry isn’t quite joking either. He wants Alison to trust him as unquestioningly as she does his counterpart.

“Hah!” scoffs Alison. “I see what you did there, including yourself in the group of people that I love and therefore trust implicitly. But I don’t trust you implicitly because I don’t love you.”

“Yeah, you do.” Harry leans back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head, stretching out his legs, and crossing them at the ankle.

“I do what? Trust you implicitly or love you?”

“Both.”

“What are you talking about?” Alison grimaces.

“You love me,” he says again, “according to my denotation of love in this case, which is as follows. Ahem. Love,” he says like a classically trained actor embarking on a Shakespearean soliloquy, “is a profound emotional attachment between two people that contains respect, happiness in the other’s presence, mutual confidence in each other’s loyalty, vigilance, and protectiveness, and a desire to ensure the other’s safety, wholeness, and happiness.”

“Okay, but — “

“Shut up.” Harry wags a finger at her. “You, dearest Dominatrix mine, desire my safety, wholeness, and happiness. You watch out for me. You tell me what you’re thinking and feeling, even when it’s hard. You believe the best of me, respect me, enjoy my company, and treat me like an honored member of your chosen family. That,” he says, pointing triumphantly at her, “is what constitutes love in this case, and therefore you clearly, evidently, manifestly, and indubitably love me. As we’ve already established, you place implicit, unquestioning trust in the people that you love as well, so obviously you trust me in the same way too.”

Alison falls silent. Part of her wants him to be wrong because he’s just so fucking smug. The slightly more perceptive part of herself suspects that he might be onto something and she just doesn’t want to admit it. “That doesn’t mean that everything’s all fine and dandy between us,” she warns him. 

“Good!” A winning smile. “I’d wonder what was wrong with you if you thought it was.”

“And I’m still never forgiving you for acting like a nasty little shit in Dystopiaville.”

“Fine!” Apparently nothing will puncture his good mood now. “I’m not expecting you to. Again, I’d be very concerned if you started regarding me with unadulterated adoration.” 

“Ew. I’d be very concerned if _anyone_ started regarding you like that.” Alison wrinkles her nose. “Okay, so you seem to have a relatively, uh, realistic idea of what your concept of love means, but what do you _want?_ You always want something, Harry, so what do you want from me?”

“Not much. Just admit that you love me and then treat me accordingly, and we’ll both be happy. Simple? Simple!”

“Uh huh.” Alison’s smirk deepens. “Simple. Don’t hold your breath.”

“I won’t. You treat me like you love me, so — “ Harry shrugs, his own smirk going pointy. “You’ll tell me you love me soon enough.”

“I’m ignoring you now!” Alison says in a singsong, turning her back ostentatiously.

“Hah! I’d like to see you try.”


	7. Alterations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison and Harry take their clothes off in a very significant moment.

Harry stays quiet for all of a minute before saying, “Hey, Dominatrix dear?”

“I caaaaaaan’t heeeeeeear yoooouuuuuuuu.”

“Okay, well then, I guess I’ll just talk to the wall. O lift wall, are you finding the atmosphere inside this compartment as stiflingly uncomfortable as I am?”

“Now that you mention it,” says Alison, “it’s gross in here. I’m, uh, gonna take my shoes off, if that’s okay.” She unbuckles her Mary Janes. 

“Oh good, we’re taking our clothes off? Don’t mind if I do.” In quick succession, Harry divests himself of his shoes, stockings, and retrocious jacket. After that, he suddenly flops, having temporarily exhausted himself. He ties his shoes together with his stockings, then bundles them in the jacket, extending the results to Alison. “Back inner zippered bag, if you would be so kind? That took more out of me than I expected.”

Alison does as asked and then tries to adjust her clothes. She pushes the sleeves of her bulky black jumper up above her elbows. She cuffs her violently yellow jeans as much as she can. And yet she still feels bloated with sweat. She wants to follow Harry’s example, but — “Uh, Harry? Can I ask you about something, uh, awkward?”

He shrugs with only a slight ripple of his shoulders. “What the hell? It can’t be anything more awkward than this entire bizarre, unexpected, but not entirely unwelcome, day we’re having.” His apologetic eyebrows and cockeyed grin promise laughter only at their shared predicament, not at her or her words.

“Well, uh, it’s about something we’ve been studiously pretending doesn’t exist.” Alison looks away.

“Ah. That.” All jocularity gone, Harry sits up suddenly, redistributing his skirt around his legs. “Then it would be the pathological lust that I used to feel for you because I couldn’t have you, right?”

When Harry came back to fix Alison’s chip about fifteen months ago, she required him to tell the truth about everything. He did, and sometimes the results were more than Alison ever bargained for. For example, she asked him what he wanted, and he said he wanted her. She asked him how he wanted her — like sexually? He said yes; he always lusted after whoever he couldn’t have.

Neither Alison nor Harry wanted him to lust after the future spouse of Bill, his chosen daughter. And yet, now that he admitted it, the specter of his unwanted desire for Alison hung about unignorably. Mortified with discomfort and embarrassment, Alison and Harry agreed never to mention it again. They never have — until now.

“Yeah,  _ that. _ Do you still — ?” Alison stops. “Wait — you said that you  _ used to _ feel it. Does that mean that you stopped? It fucked off? Does that mean that I can stop suppressing the thought that my future sort of father-in-law is fantasizing about doing — things — to — ?”

“Stop!” Harry makes guillotine motions across his throat. “Stop! Yes, you can stop! Please! Stop! I no longer have that compulsion, so you can quit mentioning it in excruciating detail.” He winces, face flushed. He hates talking about it as much as she does.

“It’s gone?” Alison stares. “You mean it went away just like that? It said,  _ Oh hey, I see you’re trying to have a functional relationship with the Dominatrix, and I’m clearly disgusting, pathological, and dysfunctional, so I’ll just quietly show myself the door?” _

Harry snorts. “It wasn’t that polite. It just started...obsessing me less. When we first started the parole hearings, it always, uh, overtook my attention immediately before and immediately after. That’s part of the reason that I was always so frantic with anxiety in the beginning, you know,” he adds. “I was trying valiantly not to be derailed by it. I also believed that you wouldn’t accept any evidence whatsoever of my  _ good behavior,” _ he says, adding air quotes, “and that you’d ultimately deport me.”

“I wasn’t exactly the master of my emotions and the captain of my soul when we first started either,” Alison admits. “I didn’t know how to talk to someone who’d saved my life, but that I didn’t really like. Do I acknowledge what we did? Do I play it cool? That’s why I kept everything very formal and structured.”

“You read from a script, my dear,” Harry laughs. “You cross-examined me like a lawyer. You also kept checking the time, and you refused to make eye contact.”

“Yeah, well,  _ you _ were reading from a script too,” Alison reminisces.  _ “ — Badly. _ You were losing your place, repeating yourself, and swearing.” 

“It was just really deep Method acting.” Harry sticks his nose in the air. “I was just getting  _ into _ the terror-stricken anxiety. Yeah. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

Alison joins his chuckle. “It’s a good thing we both changed slightly after the first few times. I think I would have herniated something if we’d kept going like that.”

Harry agrees. He says that, after three or four months, once he and Alison realized how much they both wanted this parole project to succeed, he relaxed. More confident in his chances of staying in Alison’s universe, Harry found himself less preoccupied with unwanted sexual thoughts. He fantasized instead about having his own TARDIS Talk phone or planning his daughter’s wedding. By the time he ended his parole hearings, his dreams had shifted entirely into plans for his future with his daughter and the rest of the Dorks.

“It’s like I said,” he concludes, spreading out his arms. “That pathological desire only occurs when I want what I do not have. Now that I have you, the lust is gone.”

Alison nods. “Good. Thank God. That makes things significantly less awkward.”

“Yeah. Wake me up if you need me, my dear.” Harry reclines his seat and closes his eyes to rest. 

After that conversation, Alison feels comfortable taking off her socks. But it doesn’t help. Her jumper and jeans, fine for the weather outside, are much too heavy for her current confined quarters. “Yuck,” she murmurs, seizing the hem of her jumper and flapping it in an attempt to direct air flow to her chest. It doesn’t work. 

Harry tilts his seat back up with a sigh almost as exasperated as Alison’s. “Give me your jumper,” he says, snapping his fingers and holding out his hand. “And your trousers while you’re at it. I can’t rest when you’re grumbling like that.”

“And confiscating my clothes will make me stop?”

“No. I’m cutting them down to give you some more ventilation.” Harry pulls out his laser and flips it between his hands. He misses it. It hits the floor. “Shit. Still tired. My coordination is off. My dear?”

Alison is already dropping her jeans in the privacy of the area behind Harry. “Hang on; I’m taking my trousers off!” She passes her jeans and jumper to Harry over his shoulder. Then she goes around to the front of Harry’s chair and retrieves his laser for him. 

Though she’s just in her bra and underwear, she doesn’t feel nervous about Harry seeing her. He isn’t even paying attention to her; zeroed in on her clothes, he clearly considers fashion much more important than the semi-naked Earthling nearby. If she had any doubt before that he was telling the truth, she would know now that the weird pathological lust has truly fucked off and died for good. “I sure hope my clothes don’t stink,” Alison mutters.

“They don’t.” Harry zaps her jeans into cut-offs and amputates the sleeves from her jumper. 

“Thanks.” Alison puts them on. The jumper, meant to be oversize in its enveloping comfort, is now sleeveless, resembling a knitted vest for someone much larger. The arm holes gape; the new, uncinched hem hangs loosely around her waist. 

Alison flashes back to her youth. She, child of parents who made barely enough, often got her wardrobe from charity shop bins. Her mom had an eye for like-new stuff, but that didn’t necessarily make Alison feel good. Even in something that fit her well, she always felt like she was wearing someone’s wrong-size cast-offs: frayed and sloppy.

“You’re frowning.” Harry, hunching forward to peer into her face, sits up. “You think it looks cheap, unflattering, and — shameful? Well, that won’t do at all. Give it here.” 

“But it’s nothing you did,” Alison tells him. “It’s just — it’s like the embodiment of how wearing charity shop clothes felt to me when I was a kid — you know?”

“Clothes,” says Harry, who has materialized a travel-size sewing kit in his lap, “are our elective extensions of our skin. We may as well make sure they fit, flatter, and feel good to wear. Your jumper.” Snap snap, outstretched hand.

“I don’t want to make more work for you, though.”

“Dominatrix.” He says it like an interrogative, but with the even tone and finality of one that’s already been answered. Meeting her eyes, he continues to hold out his hand.

Alison knows that tone intimately well. That’s the same voice — dipping down in pitch, going level and calm — with which the Magister says  _ tace. _ At that word, everything stops — or it’s supposed to. It’s the tone of someone who perfectly envisions your instant and implicit obedience.  _ Take this seriously, _ says that tone.  _ Ignore this, and I shall be most displeased. _

Well, of course Harry wouldn’t say it like that. He’d say,  _ Seriously, Dominatrix? Quit stalling and hand it over.  _ It’s the Magister who uses the language of pleasing. He emphasizes that her actions affect his happiness. In their arrangement, their pleasure and displeasure are closely knit. She misses him. She misses him so much...

And now, of all possible occasions during which Harry could have wielded this voice and this look, he does so now. Because it has to do with clothes, something that he takes as seriously as the Magister and the Stylist? No, that’s only part of it. 

It’s also because he is distressed to have given his dear Dominatrix something so important — the equivalent of her own flesh — that causes her displeasure. He will be displeased for as long as she is displeased. It’s his desire, his duty, and his honored prerogative to remedy his error and thus please her.

“Thank you,” says Harry with a nod, flipping her jumper inside out and beginning to work with it. Alison realizes that, while she was analyzing all the nuances of their negotiation, she gave him her jumper anyway.

Harry bends over Alison’s jumper while she stretches her upper body. She tries to cool off without sharing her [unverified but terrifyingly probable] armpit stink with her fellow inmate. He soon finishes, cutting the last thread and throwing her the jumper.

Alison puts it on. He’s brought it in narrower at the sides and reduced the size of the armholes. Somehow he also found enough fabric to turn the shapeless, saggy neckline into a cowl, which...doesn’t feel that bad, actually. “It’s...my size!” Alison exclaims. “Thank you!”

“Now you just don’t like it because it’s more form-fitting than you’re used to,” says Harry, smirking, “and that displeasure I can live with. You’re welcome!”

“Thanks,” Alison repeats, but more softly, hoping to emphasize her sincerity. How does she express that she knows how important this particular discussion has been to him? “Uh, I know how important clothes are to you and how it’s probably a huge sign of affection for you to sew something for someone, so I just wanted to say — “

His smile gentles, though it’s still very calm and perspicacious. He nods in a way that could either be a subject deferring to his ruler, a ruler acknowledging his subject, or, as it almost certainly is nowadays, something of both at the same time. “Likewise, Dominatrix.” 

With slightly horrified amusement, Alison realizes something. As far as Harry’s concerned, Alison is now either  _ my dear _ or  _ my Dominatrix. _ Something about his recent use of the word proves that she’s no longer tagged as  _ Alison _ in his mind; therefore he will never think to call her that. He will refer to her with the name he knows her by, and — oh Lord, won’t that be fun? Alison makes a mental note to discuss with him later the vital importance of calling her by her birth name in front of people outside the Dork fam, like, for example, her parents.

  
Yikes! Her parents! Speaking of weddings and awkwardness, her parents will want to meet Bill’s sort of foster parent maybe. It’s not that she’s worried about any  _ They’re both fucking each other’s siblings and lying about it! _ drama. It’s just that her mum and Harry are both control freaks and self-styled Masters of Getting Shit Done. The mum who’s been fantasizing in great detail about her only daughter’s wedding for decades goes head to head with the supervillain wedding planner/fucker-upper. Well, that’ll be fun.


	8. Connection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alison and Harry have Dramatic Moments. Then they have Dramatic Revelations.

With nothing else to pass the time, Alison and Harry turn to complaining. Alison’s grievances concern her physical condition. Her ass is going numb from sitting on the lift’s unpadded floor. She’s thirsty. She has to go to the bathroom. And the glare from the floodlights hurts her eyes.

Much to Alison’s delight, Harry solves all her problems with help from his miracle chair, which has everything he needs to help her out. He provides one of his gel cushions for her rear, water for her thirst, and something like a urine specimen jar [?!] for her liquid waste. Alison is very glad that her waste isn’t solid this time. She’s also relieved when Harry shuts off all lights; she doesn’t need them anymore because she knows he’s there. Also the lack of light seems to cool the place off slightly.

Meanwhile, Harry, while he suffers physical discomfort in almost every other circumstance, fares surprisingly well. He’s tired, especially after the exertion needed to tailor Alison’s clothes, but not really hungry or thirsty, though he does drink, following Alison’s example. He dislikes the stale, stagnant air in the lift, but he’s feeling little physical pain at the moment.

Perhaps that’s why his complaint is less of a concrete one and more a piece of literary criticism. Namely, he finds this entire experience narratively unsatisfying. “This is just so...underwhelming, isn’t it, my dear? It’s just so jejune, so trivial, so uninspiring, especially for two people of our caliber.” 

“The Dominatrix and the Master of Getting Shit Done!” Alison says like it’s a movie title.

“Exactly! It’s the perfect double billing!” says Harry. “You and me, my dear — we make an excellent team. We should be dashing across space and time, leaving innumerable swooning groupies in our wake. At the very least, we should be enjoying ourselves by causing a little nuptial chaos. 

“But alas — such a life is not ours, my dear. No glory, no groupies, only the quotidian tyranny of the inescapably banal.” Harry sighs a sigh so extensive that it serves as a full sentence, possibly an entire paragraph, of woe. “After eating a thoroughly ordinary lunch at a thoroughly ordinary diner, we’re stuck in a thoroughly ordinary lift with thoroughly ordinary mechanical problems and ridiculously mundane obstacles that we can’t overcome. It's not even  _ The Master and the Dominatrix in the Lift That Time Forgot!” _

“More like  _ Alison and Harry’s Stupid Inconvenience,” _ supplies Alison.

“I know. I know. We’re so much better than this!” he cries, projecting his voice to the ceiling. A pause, then a broken whisper: “We’re — so much — better than — this — “

“Well, you’re the fucking supervillain with psychic powers who can bend other people’s minds to his will,” Alison says. “Can’t you motivate someone to let us out?”

“Ah hah!” Harry snaps on one of the reading lamps. His eyes flash in a sliver of light, while the rest of him is lost to utter shadow. “Yes! Brilliant idea, Dominatrix! Brilliant!”

“Did you, uh, forget that you had psychic powers?” Alison asks with more curiosity than anything. “You used them just a little a while ago when you were trying to calm me down.”

“I — !” Harry begins, loud with indignation. Pause. He laughs a little laugh; she sees him shaking his head. “My dear, have you ever been in a completely new situation and found yourself acting in an unexpected manner — one might even say out of character?”

Alison laughs too. “Uh,  _ yeah, _ seeing as how I just had a complete meltdown over being stuck in a lift and then I  _ wanted _ you to read my mind without permission.” She thinks momentarily. “But, uh, that’s actually totally  _ in _ character for me in a way. I’m a control freak, and so much about this situation takes control away from me, so of course I’m going to lose my shit. And I love my robot and how he balances, grounds, and accepts me, so of course I’m going to look for the same thing when he’s not there.”

“And you’ve seen for yourself,” Harry continues, “how I forget the most basic information under pressure — being unable to recite my lines, even with cue cards in my hands. So, under the pressure of this novel situation — yes.” His voice lowers. “I temporarily forgot that I had psychic powers. I would appreciate it if you didn’t laugh at me.”

“Oh no! I wasn’t laughing  _ at  _ you when you asked me the question. It was like commiserating laughter — laughing  _ with _ you,” Alison says hastily. “You know — like you weren’t laughing at me when I told you what was going on with my robot, even though I kept worrying that you would.”

“Yes,” says Harry, his voice going soft. “Like that. Now, before you give me a psychic boost so that I can extend my range and actually reach someone with my message, I’d like to say something, if I may.”

“Uhhhhhhh, okay.”

His self-conscious smile seems even more crooked and wry in the deep, sharp shadows. “And I’m not saying this because I’m trying to coerce a response in kind from you, okay?”

“Uhhhhhhh, okay. Now I’m starting to worry, though…”

“Please don’t.” He shrugs. “It’s nothing bad. All I wanted to say was — I love you, my dear. There.” Another shrug. “That’s it. That’s all. Ahem.” He clears his throat, his tone lightening, as he swerves to another subject: “Now — about that psychic boost — my range, as you know, is shit, so I’ll need your assistance in extending it. As you also know, that requires skin-to-skin contact, so we’ll be holding h — “

“Hey, wait.” Alison’s still thinking about his first statement. Yeah, Harry loves her. He has loved her since she left Dystopiaville, but the nature of that love has changed as he himself has changed. 

At first, Harry loved her almost unwillingly. While amazed and pleased by her respect, he feared her greatly. His continued relationship with Bill depended on Alison’s judgment, and he worried that Alison might not deem him good enough. Between that anxiety and his shame over mistreating her in Dystopiaville, he was apologizing continually when he came back to fix her chip. He still believed that he was the same nasty little shit that he had been in Dystopiaville. 

Then, during the past year and three months, Harry changed, and so did his love for her. He realized that she wanted him to prove himself as much as he did. They had the same immediate goals. Thus encouraged, Harry lost his fear of her; instead he gained his confidence, his calm, and his control. In believing that he was her equal, he became so. He was happy and powerful; he chose to love her willingly, and that made him happier and even more powerful.

As for Alison, she didn’t love him in Dystopiaville because he was unlovable. He was full of unmastered rage and grief, all of which he directed toward her. She didn’t love him when he came back a year and three months ago either. He still seethed with that same anger and sadness, but now he used it to torture himself. That — plus the lurking pathological lust — was not attractive at all.

Now, though, everything that she found repulsive about Harry has disappeared completely, like the self-flagellation and the pathological lust. Or it has been mastered, rerouted toward happier ends, like his passionate temper and his deserve to rule/serve. He and the Magister now share many of the same virtues. Like the Magister, he is someone who has done mean, cruel things, but also someone who has changed and become her equal, constantly striving to do good. Now he is worthy of being loved.

“Wait,” Alison says again. “Harry, shut up for a minute. I want to say something.”

“Hm?” He tilts his head.

“I love you too,” says Alison. 

“Hey now.” Harry holds up his hands toward her. “I told you that I wasn’t trying to make you say it back to me. I just — I didn’t want it to be coercive.”

“Don’t you trust me?” says Alison. “It’s not. Read my mind, and you’ll see that it’s not.”

“It’s not?” Harry repeats it as a question. Then a statement: “It’s not. I don’t need to read your mind. I’m just reading your — you.” He encompasses the length of her in a hand wave. “And you’re right — it’s not. You’re telling the truth. Well!” He raises his chin and laughs. “You’re a — That’s a — very, uh — a rather, uh — hah hah hah!” He doubles over, chuckling explosively, and it isn’t until he sniffles wetly that she realizes that he’s crying.

“Harry!” Alison jumps up. “Are you okay? Muscle spasms? Cramps? Just the usual chronic pain that likes to pop up at the worst times? If you tell me where your meds are — “

He sends something to her telepathically. Again, it’s not words, but a visceral sensation of his that becomes hers as well. She feels light, despite the stolid air. Everything that was ever weighing her down has abandoned her, if only for a moment. She burns; she breaks; she dies, just as she always has since she came back to life, but now she liberates herself from some baggage, some sad load. Now she too rises.

At the same time, this is strange; this is foreign; she never expected to feel this way — at least not so soon. Yet it’s happening now — now! — and she’s losing control. Everything’s slipping; everything’s rising; everything’s changing, but isn’t that what she wanted? How long has she wanted to lose control in just this way? And how foolish was she to forget that it hurt so much?

_ Oh, _ says Alison.  _ You’re happy. But you’re also scared. Ambivalence then — Yeah, it’s not the kind of pain that your meds can really touch, huh? _

_ No. _ He laughs aloud, but it sticks in his nose along with all the snot generated by his tears and comes out as a garbled snort.

_ Well — I — uh — Should I leave you alone or what? _

_ You don’t want to. _

_ I just — I never know — Some people want someone to stay; some people want time alone. Some people, like me, want different things, depending on the circumstances. _

_ As do I. And now — stay, please. _ Even though he’s crying, his telepathic speech is quiet, subdued, gentle, oddly serene.

_ Okay, _ says Alison.  _ I will. I’m not going anywhere. _

  
He unbends and faces her. Tears wink brightly in his eyes, while his irises are as deep and intense as the darkness. His gaze is steady, despite the erratic falls of tears. It’s like watching the sun shine through the rain clouds. The light will always burn through eventually.  _ I know, _ he says.  _ I know. _


	9. Reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A happy ending to everything, with lots of wuvs for Alison and the Magister.

“Well!” Alison remarks with a bright and gusty sigh after a long discussion with the Magister later the same day. “I’ll be damned! He was right.”

“Who?” inquires the Magister. The two of them, in his study after Alison’s adventure in the lift that time forgot, now use the room for its comfiest purpose: snuggling. With the faint smell of cigar smoke curling about them, they ensconce themselves in the deep purple shadows of the couch and curl about each other.

“Harry,” Alison answers. “He was right. My love is your adoration.”

After she and Harry exchanged protestations of love in the lift, they collaborated. Her mental strength extended his usually small range of power, and he connected mentally with Cooper, who had hired him to stop their wedding by publicly humiliating Lee. Cooper, in the emergency room for a scalp wound sustained from a flying bouquet, initially did not want to do anything for Harry.

Harry reminded them that he wanted only one thing in exchange for his services: a favor, called in whenever, wherever, and for whatever he wanted. In this case, it was nothing difficult or morally reprehensible, only a phone call. If Cooper had stamina to argue with Harry, certainly they could make a simple phone call. 

Cooper then made the mistake of asking who Harry thought he was, ordering them around. Harry uttered a phrase that Alison had only ever heard before in jest:  _ I am the Master —  _ your  _ Master — and you will obey me. _ He said it rather coolly, as if relaying the obvious, and that sheer nonchalance caused Alison’s skin to pucker and chill. Then Harry shoved his psychic compulsion toward Cooper. 

It worked. Cooper obeyed, calling the fire department. Firefighters responded promptly. Power was restored to the elevator. Alison and Harry were released, panting, into the wide world once more. 

They exchanged thanks with one another shyly, suddenly unable to look at each other. He invited her to dinner in the near future at his house in Grace’s End, London; she, burning with curiosity since all the other Dorks had been there, but she hadn’t, said she’d like that. There was an awkward pause in which Alison tried to determine if Harry wanted to hug her and if she’d mind. Then he said that he really had to return home and nap, and that was that.

Alison returned home too, in desperate need of a nap and robot cuddles. After she had completed the first, the Magister, purring, head-butting, and practically sitting on her in joy, was all too glad to oblige with the second . They’ve been talking ever since, and Harry’s advice to compare their denotations of  _ love _ and  _ adoration _ was just what they needed.

The Magister nods deeply. “My adorrrrrrration,” he replies, his Rs buzzing with cozy purrs, “is yourrrrrrr love.”

Alison shakes her head. “And all we needed to do was to compare definitions. We each had different connotations with each term, but our denotations were the very same. Once we told each other our definitions, we realized that what he said was true. They were the same. It was that simple! It really was that simple — a mind-bogglingly simple matter of semantics.”

The Magister corrects her. “It was slightly more complex than that. We acknowledged our wrongs too: me my lack of insight into the reasons for your distress, you your provoking attacks and insults. We then apologized, which, for two persons who are such intransigent little  _ shits,” _ he says, mimicking her indignant words exactly, “is a notable feat.”

“True,” says Alison. “We really should recognize our heroic efforts in that realm. But — ugh!” She coughs out an exasperated sigh. “I was so not a hero, though. I was nothing but a fucking soggy damsel in distress. I spent most of the time in the elevator freaking the fuck out. And it wasn’t Harry who freaked me out. It was being trapped in a little suspended box — without any light — like being back in the Shalka cave or the psychic vampire’s. Then I panicked even more when I lost — Wait! My phone!”

“Never fear. Scintilla retrieved it from the diner about an hour ago.” The Magister lays one hand heavily on Alison’s head, smoothing down her hair along with her alarm. 

“Then I freaked the fuck out because Harry was trying to talk me down — you know, the way that you do — and — uuuuuuugh!” With a sound of guttural melodrama, Alison arches her neck back and leans her head against the couch.

“No,” says the Magister, quietly rather than meanly. He tilts her head back up to its usual neutral position on her spine. “Stay still.” He rubs his hand down her hair again — and again — and again.

“And then,” Alison goes on, “he sort of accidentally linked up psychically with me, so he was talking in my head.  _ He _ freaked out about that because I hadn’t given him permission. Then he left — my mind, I mean — and then  _ I _ freaked out because I was all alone in my head, and I didn’t want to be. So he came back and stayed, and I completely dissolved into a puddle of wretched  _ snot _ and  _ tears _ because I fucking hate being helpless. Ugh! I was such a fucking damsel in distress.”

“Tell me, my dear — what grudge do you hold against their ilk?”

“Oh, mostly the fact that they’re soggy and they don’t do anything.”

The Magister quits petting Alison. He holds himself still. She feels him poised, gathering his words. “I know perfectly well that you in no way meant to cast aspersions on me with such a comment. But I am a person with many griefs who must, on occasion, suffer unwanted stillness and disempowerment. As for grief, I am a robot without the lacrimal glands to cry, and yet I have been abused and compromised by many people, my own inevitable spouse most recently. Those abuses, as well as the nonconsensual obedience into which I forced others, oppress me with sadness.

“As for stillness, periodically I am disempowered, whether for maintenance, one of my games with the Doctor, or someone else’s malicious intent. Furthermore, I was once long confined to Anima, unable to go outside, to meet people, to explore, to accompany my Doctor, and to perform so many actions that I dearly missed.” Blinking, he contemplates his skinless mechanical hands, flexing their beautiful bare metal joints, examining them front and back. 

“Ah,” says Alison. “Oh. Uh. Shit. I never really thought of — “

He raises a hand, his elegantly tapered fingertips shining with peaceful blue light. “Please — I’m not telling you this to elicit your guilt and an apology. Do you understand, though, how I myself might epitomize your soggy and inactive damsel in distress?” 

“Um. Yeah. I do.”

“I used to think much like you, my dear.” The Magister stretches out his legs, crossing his ankles on an aubergine marshmallow of an ottoman. “I thought that being the master of my fate and the captain of my soul meant that I always had to be in control. I could never permit myself to be passive, still, scared, in pain, overwhelmed, unguarded, or otherwise vulnerable. If I did, then someone would exploit me. Then I’d no longer be master of myself.”

“Yeah.” Alison nods quietly. “I know that line of thinking. Opening up means that someone will find out your secret fears and use them to destroy you. Being passive turns you into a target for someone else’s sadism.”

“Just so.” The Magister acknowledges her with a sigh. “Then I died out of all my biological pains and even my tears. My Doctor, as you are well aware, reconstituted me as a robot. Now—” He pauses heavily. “I am uneasy with the contingent nature of my mechanical state. As a robot, I deal with dependence and pain as an ineradicable part of my existence. Sometimes — perhaps even most times — I shall be that soggy damsel in distress of yours.”

“But — you’re not —“

“Yes!” the Magister declares sharply. The amber lights in his eyes shine hard, like stars on a clear night — not angry, but strong and definite. “Yes, I am that, and you will not deny it. That is part of my strength now.”

“You’re saying that it’s a good thing then?” cries Alison. “I should be glad to be a weepy mess when I’m stuck in a lift?”

The Magister closes his eyes and keeps them closed. “No. That is not what I said.” He opens his eyes, pinning her with them. “And I think you know that too. I am not telling you what or how to feel. I am only relating to you what I myself have learned. Please — keep your patience and listen. Will you?”

Alison nods, and the Magister goes on, his tone level and grave. “Strength, power, wisdom — I cannot gain or keep these by closing my gate, sheathing myself in armor, and awaiting attacks. I must acknowledge that I will suffer, whether by pain, chance, someone’s cruelty, or even the consequences of my own actions. In short, suffering is a fact of life.”

“Okay, that I understand,” concedes Alison with a small chuckle. 

Now he comes close to her, the tip of his nose only a few centimeters from hers. He blinks once, but that does not diminish the penetrating, lamp-like power emanating from his nearly golden eyes. “We have no choice about whether we experience suffering. However, one may choose one’s response to that suffering, Domina  _ carissima,” _ he says softly, all the intensity from his eyes now propelling his quiet words. “Sometimes I make the choice to fight the suffering and beat it back. Sometimes I may win, and those fights are worth undertaking. Sometimes, though, I cannot stave off my pain. I can only live with it, enduring.”

“Oh! So you’re saying that it’s about knowing when to fight and when to yield. It’s not just about me and whether I should cry in a lift, but about the wisest thing to do when you’re in pain.”

“Yes! Precisely!” The Magister swings back from Alison far enough so that he can bring his hands together in a resounding clap of approval. “I am not telling you what to do, my dear. I am trying to tell you that you have options. I cannot always strive, fight, and dominate. I have learned that I must submit as well, and I have learned how to do so effectively. If you too learn when to rule and when to serve — “

“It matters not how big the mess,

How charged with punishments the scroll;

I am the damsel in distress;

I am the captain of my soul?”

Alison ends her rewrite of  _ Invictus’ _ last stanza with an interrogative, joking tone.

“Yes!” The Magister sit-jumps a bit, just like Alison when she bounces and squees. “That’s exactly it! You must accept and befriend your stillness, your silence, your suffering. Then — only then — will you be on the way to self-mastery. I knew that you’d understand _ , mea _ Domina  _ carissima, _ dearest and most obedient damsel in distress!”

A little firework goes off somewhere deep inside Alison. It’s like an internal exclamation point, a flash denoting something important. Tears pop into her eyes. “You — I — No. No. Why — Why am I crying?” she wonders, tears slipping in quick succession down her face.

“Have I upset you, Domina?” The Magister comes closer, his purr strengthening as he tries to calm her down.

“What you said made me cry…” Alison says slowly between sniffles.  _ “My dearest damsel in distress… _ but I’m not sad or angry at you or anything. I just feel… soggy.”

“Ah,” he says, the word low. He has realized something, so Alison isn’t sure what. “Weep then,” he says, swiping his finger very gently under her eyes. He catches her tears on the lighted tip of a glass finger. “Weep, my lovely, obedient Domina, my dearest and most wonderful damsel in distress.”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” says Alison. Tears spurt from her eyes as from a sprinkler, even though she doesn’t know what she’s saying yes to. 

The Magister wraps his arms around her. He holds her with such constriction that she can barely breathe to sob. The sternness of his voice transmutes into the irresistible strength of his hold. “I am your safety,” he breathes in her ear, his voice breeze-light, “and you are mine. You are my amazing and adored damsel in distress. Now — cry. I am your Magister, and you will obey me.” 

Alison’s parents told her not to cry.  _ Tears are like snot, _ her mum once said.  _ No one wants to see that.  _ Her dad, who prided himself in not taking sick days or swearing when he hurt himself, viewed tears as something to override or ignore.  _ No more tears, _ he’d say.  _ You’re tougher than that, Ali! _ They considered stoicism a virtue, one which their daughter, being Black in a White world, had to overrepresent if she wanted to succeed. 

And now her Magister, her robot, the one she wants most to please, orders her to do the very thing that she has so long suppressed. There is no chance of shaming him or revolting him with her tears, for he happily declares that she belongs to him, even though her various facial orifices are leaking. He may even be proud, for he says she’s amazing. She cries, then, because she wants to obey him and also because she’s physically incapable of stopping.

She cries and cries and cries. Years of suppressed tears have collected deep within her, forming a secret aquifer of grief. Now these wellsprings burst up, clogging her sinuses, drenching her face. 

Throughout it all, he neither moves nor speaks; he only holds. When her tears wash through her and finally recede, he clasps her just as strongly as he did in the beginning. When she raises and lowers her shoulders in a breath that clears her insides, he sits, warm and still and calm. Whatever she does, he is there. He remains; he stays; he possesses her. She is his; he accepts all of her, including her tears and her distress. 

“My dear Domina,” says the Magister at last, and Alison feels his words transmitted from his chest to her.  _ “Mea obsequentissima, _ you are so very good. You are so very obedient. Thank you.”

“Uh… I...I’ve cried before, but that was — different.”

“You did not apologize for it.”

“Huh. No. I didn’t. And you — “ Alison realizes why she was crying. “And you just accepted it. You said  _ damsel in distress _ like it was who I was, like a label or a title. But you said it just like it was  _ mea Domina carissima, _ like it was something that you were proud of me for.” Leaning against his side, she looks up at him.

“Yes, I am proud of you for all that you are.” His voice, heavy and gentle at once, feels like it’s petting her.

“Oh,” says Alison in a small voice. “Thank you. I — felt it was — No one’s ever made me feel like — it’s okay — to — “

The Magister’s eyes glimmer with amber. “As one damsel in distress to another, my dear,” he says, “let me assure you that it is in fact all right.”

“Ah,” says Alison. She sighs and wipes her eyes.

The Magister runs the flat of his hand across Alison’s scalp. Then he brings his hand back around, running the side of his index finger down her neck. It’s something that she has done with him before — a light variation on beard scritches, which he can’t get enough of — but he has never done so with her. With a happy shiver, Alison flops dramatically so that her torso lies across his knees. 

He does it again and then very gently cups his warm metal hand about her throat at the level of her voicebox. He does not constrain her breath, but she still starts with a gasp, before drifting into a dreamier relaxation. He moves his hand down to his collar’s key, which always hangs around her neck on her choker, then back up to her throat. She tries to keep her eyes open so that she can stare into his, but what he’s doing is so  _ good _ that she has to close her eyes. Otherwise it would be too much. She sighs, letting her eyes shut and the rest of her fall.

“I do believe,” he says, laughing enough for her to feel it ripple through her back, “that, if I did this long enough, you might start purring yourself. You  _ are _ mine, aren’t you?”

She opens her mouth to confirm, but he says, _ “Tace.”  _ Now, unlike this morning, she obeys his command all too gladly. “You are mine, and you will prove it by doing precisely what I tell you to. Say nothing. Be still. I want you to be my very good Domina: perfectly silent, perfectly voiceless, perfectly peaceful, perfectly attentive, perfectly obedient, perfectly,” he says, tugging on her key just enough so that she knows exactly where his hand is,  _ “mine. _ Do you understand?”

Yes, thinks Alison, but the word never leaves her larynx. It won’t. It can’t. He says,  _ Be still; be silent,  _ and she becomes as he asks without even thinking about it. Not every single time, of course, and certainly not this morning, but during times like these, when they both drop so deeply into each other’s stillness. In the soft, malleable moments of this particular intimacy, even Alison’s nature may change, shifting as he requires. And then she is happy because she is what he wants.

“Mm,” he says approvingly. “Good.” They know each other so well and trust each other so deeply that he recognizes the subtle motions of her body that indicate an affirmative. “Verrrrrrrry good.” He’s deliberately exaggerating the R, purring on it and around it and all over it, just to make Alison smile and giggle. “My good Domina,” he says again, his voice more serious, almost muted. This time the purr hums in the background of his voice, a foundation of pride.

“You,” says her Magister, again petting her throat, “are even more mine now, I do believe, than you were this morning.” 

Alison stirs a bit. Her eyes still closed, she turns her head toward him, curious to hear what he says. She certainly feels like she’s more his, but perhaps that’s just the relief and reassurance brought on by post-difficulty snuggles. 

“Yes,” he says. “I thought you might agree. Do you know why? I have been thinking, and I have determined that, while you and I have braved many trials and griefs together, we have not truly fought. We have had no fundamental disagreements, no lost tempers, wounding words, frozen silence, or lasting sting — at least not until today.”

Reviewing the time that they’ve known each other, Alison discovers that he’s correct. She rolls onto her back, squinting at the ceiling, as she analyzes. They have, of course, been angry with each other. They’ve snapped, sniped, hurt each other’s feelings, and apologized. But they haven’t really opposed each other, misconstrued each other, and stayed away from each other before the way that they did today. Today’s fight was a long time coming, but it was necessary. 

He sighs. His rises and falls like a wave, and Alison does too. “Yes, the conclusion was something of a surprise to me as well,” he says, catching her thoughtful puzzlement. “However…” Pause. “Any strong and true connection, however, must be durable enough to survive conflict. It must contain two people that weather all the pain, confusion, and difficulty of disagreement and even then, after all that, care for each other enough to reconcile. If my partner returns, expecting us to apologize, change, and do better after a fight, then I know that my partner has the necessary trust.” 

Like you, thinks Alison, beaming a smile at him. You come back to me. You always do.

“Exactly.” He smiles down at her. Taking her into his arms, he presses his cheek against hers, whispering: “And you have returned. You do trust me. You trust yourself as well. And you trust your love, which is my adoration, and my adoration, which is your love. That trust is a great gift and a signal honor, which I am both proud and humbled to receive. Thank you, Domina  _ carissima.” _

Alison thanks him back just as effusively. She does not speak, of course, for she has no words. But she turns about in his lap and wraps her arms tightly around his middle. She rubs her cheek back and forth against the light, soft nap, just like he or any other cats do when they want to mark something as theirs.

“Well, you’re very welcome,” he says with a laugh. “And do I belong to you now?” Both of them laugh. No words are needed, for it is so very obvious that he is as much hers as she is his, and that is exactly what they both want.


End file.
